Another arts based business to come out of the course is from Lauren, aged 26. Lauren has had the idea for her business for a long time, but felt she was lacking the skills and confidence to take the leap. When she saw the Preparing to Run Your Own Business course on The Sheffield College’s website¸ she knew this could help to develop her idea.
Lauren was working part time in a pub whilst also performing unpaid in a local community theatre production at the Crucible Theatre when she first started work on setting up her own theatre company called (For) As Long As Love Lasts. The company aims to work as an ensemble that will create performances collaboratively from scratch.
The work will be presented both at professional venues and non traditional performance spaces throughout the UK and internationally. She explained: “I am passionate and motivated by using theatre as a tool to change society. I have loved theatre since my first drama lesson when I was 11. I went onto studying performing arts at college, a drama degree at university and a masters in contemporary theatre at drama school. I decided after working as actor for other theatre companies that I wanted to share my own ideas with the world and I want to change society in a fundamental way. I aim to do outreach work alongside my performances in order to use my skills to help others.”
The course has helped Lauren get a better understanding of the areas she’s less interested in like book keeping and she still want aims to get more training from the Inland Revenue so she can assess how it will work financially. When asked if she would have started a business without this training, she said: “No, I think I would have always needed to be guided in certain aspects of business in order to know how to set it up. The advice from the tutor and other students has been a great help to me.”